Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO

Why Adding Blog Comments Does Nothing For SEO

Hello readers, this week I have a double whammy (My spell checker doesn’t like the word but i’m leaving it in!) of articles for you. The first article that you are reading now is about dispelling a myth that leaving comments on WordPress blogs is a good way to get a back-link to your website.

The second article, that you can find underneath this one is about a nasty run in I’ve had with 1&1 Internet and a debt collection agency.

But like all chronological things, we will start at the beginning with the WordPress/SEO article.

I’m sure you have already heard this saying many times but I’ll post it again:

“Get As Many Back-links To Your Site To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking”

The above statement is 100% correct, BUT what isn’t correct is when people advise you that the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to get good quality back-links is by posting comments on blogs and entering your website URL. Here’s an example of a comment with a “back-link” made by one of my readers, Omar Martin.

So you’d think that when the Google Bot visited my blog and looked at the comments, the Bot would follow Omar’s link out of the blog and back onto his site. Normally this would be the case, but not with a WordPress blog!

By default, WordPress adds a “nofollow” attribute to the URL’s you enter in your comments. This means that when the search engine bots see your links, they make a wide birth and totally ignore them. Don’t believe me, go look at the source code of a WordPress blog, and you’ll see the “nofollow” attribute, this is an example, again from Omars comment:

So the next time you see somebody saying that adding comments to a WordPress blog is an easy way to get a back-link, give them a slap round the face and send them to this post. Well, maybe don’t do the slap bit, but do feel free to send them to this page.

Despite all of this technical mumbo-jumbo, branding your name with your website link is still a great “Old Fashioned” way to get your website noticed. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read an interesting comment on a blog, more times than not I’ll click on that persons link and check out their site!

Thanks for reading this post, feel free as always to leave a comment – You won’t get a back-link but you will get a nice warm feeling inside! (Allegedly)

Cheers,
Dan

P.S. Next week – How to take off the nofollow attribute!

Why 1 & 1 Internet Suck

Yes….I’ve turned American, I said suck 🙂

As I’m sure long time readers of the blog know, it takes a lot to get me “wound up” but something happened yesterday that got my blood boiling, and from the title of this blog post you can probably guess which company I had the misfortune of dealing with.

Here’s the story:

A couple of years ago I created a website for one of my relatives, I registered the domain name for the website over at 1&1, I created a new account for my relative so she could manage the domain.

Back at the start of the year I did an internal domain transfer and moved the domain name from her 1&1 package to my own, so her package now contained no domains.

All well and good, but then my relative received this through the post:

It was a letter from a debt collection agency called Arvato Finance acting on behalf of 1&1, they demanding the huge sum of £4.68 for a domain name that they claimed had not been paid for. The domain HAD been paid for, but it had been paid for through my own 1&1 account (where the domain now “lives”), yet they still demanded paying for the domain.

I logged into my aunts account and there was no domain name listed in the package, so why were we being charged twice for the same domain?

A phone call to both 1&1 and Arvato was about as helpful as BA on a long haul flight with both passing us back and forth between each other. After a search on google for “1&1 Arvato Finance” it seems to be a common practice for 1&1 to charge customers for domains they no longer have with the company.

In the end we decided to just pay the bill, for under £10 it really wasn’t worth the hassle.

But let this be a lesson to all of you, think twice before you purchase your domain name with 1&1!

You can read my 1and1 Review by clicking here.

Update; March 2011

It’s been the best part of 3 years since I originally created this post, but a reader has just left a very useful comment that shows you exactly how to word your reply to Arvato Finance if you don’t think you owe 1and1 any money. Full credit for the letter below goes to James Kahm.

To: collections@arvatofinance.co.uk
Subject: REF : XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 13:25:10 +0000Dear AFS

You have contacted me regarding the account with the above reference number, which you claim is owed by myself/ourselves.

I would point out that I have no knowledge of any such debt being owed to (1 and 1 internet ).

I am are familiar with the Office of Fair Trading debt collection Guidance which states that it unfair to send demands for payment to an individual when it is uncertain that they are the debtor in question.

I/we would also point out that the OFT say under the Guidance that it is unfair to pursue third parties for payment when they are not liable. In not ceasing collection activity whilst investigating a reasonably queried or disputed debt you are using deceptive/and or unfair methods.

Furthermore ignoring and/or disregarding claims that debts have been settled or are disputed and continuing to make unjustified demands for payment amounts to physical/psychological harassment.

I would ask that no further contact be made concerning the above account unless you can provide evidence as to my liability for the debt in question.

I await your written confirmation that this matter is now closed. Otherwise I will have no option but to make a complaint to the trading standards department and consider informing the OFT of your actions.

I look forward to your reply.

Yours faithfully
XXXXX

“People Are Stealing My Commissions” – No They Are Not!

“People Are Stealing My Commissions” – No They Are Not!

This particular subject has been widely misreported and misconstrued for as long as I can remember now. It’s a regular question on forums and in emails:

“What script/software should I use to stop people stealing my commissions”

“My clickbank ID appears in the browser address bar, I’m losing commissions!”

Let me first put the world to rights on one point before I continue. What do you think would happen if you replaced my affiliate ID in the URL below with your own and then refreshed the page?

http://www.bartrickstoolkit.com/index.htm?hop=elpasso

You would probably be thinking that I would lose the commission, because you’ve just got rid of my affiliate ID (elpasso) and changed it to your own, so if all goes to plan, you should get the commission and not me.

Well, don’t take my word for it. Let’s try it now, follow the steps below to see who gets the sale.

1. Click here to go to a sales page via my affiliate link. (Opens in a new window)

2. Click on the “Order Now” button at the bottom of the page

3. On the checkout page, scroll to the bottom of the page and you will see the following:

You can see that the affiliate for that sale would be “elpasso” – which would be me.

Now try and “steal” my commission, I promise I won’t be offended 😉

Go back to the sales page, change the hop=elpasso in the address bar to hop=yourID and push refresh. Then click the order button and see if the affiliate has been changed.

You’ll notice that it still says “affiliate = elpasso”

Is that enough proof that changing the hop = value doesn’t have any effect on who is awarded the commission?

The hop = value, or variable is passed to the page and can be used by the webmaster to perform his or her own tracking amongst other things, it doesn’t actually set the affiliate cookie. The cookie is set when you click on the link, NOT if you change the hop value and refresh the page.

So with that out of the way, why do we bother to cloak affiliate links?

Well, for me the answer is simple. I don’t cloak my links to stop people from stealing my commissions, I cloak them because they look better! Take a look at the 2 links below and tell me which looks better.

http://elpasso.gizmodrake.hop.clickbank.net

http://elpassoblog.com/recs/bar_tricks.php

For me, that is the sole reason of cloaking links – they look better. It’s all very superficial, and the raw links may have a great personality but in this case, for me, looks are everything! 🙂

I was going to end this entry with that, but there’s a bit more info that I’ll share with you, and this is what probably causes quite a lot of your commission loses, but unfortunately there isn’t much you can do to stop it.

The 2 main causes for “stolen” commissions:

1. Having an “affiliates” link on the sales page

If you send a customer to a sales page and the customer can see an “Affiliates” link at the bottom of the page, the customer is likely to click on the link, generate their own affiliate link and buy the product through that link instead of yours – simple but true.

2. Malware/Adware **Play spooky music**

Malware/Adware is not only un-ethical, it’s also a pain in the backside to get rid of if you do become infected!

These applications, once activated on your PC can, and will replace any genuine affiliate cookies they find with their own ID. So for example, if your visitor goes to a site via your affiliate link, the malware/adware will detect that your cookie has been placed, and it will replace it with it’s own cookie – meaning you miss out on the sale.

And that brings to an end my extra little “brain fart” (thanks Pat!) for today.

Just one thing left to show/give you now, and that’s a freebie.

Don’t spend lots of money on fancy affiliate link cloakers – you don’t need them. You can easily make your own links, details can be found here and here.

Or, you can download some free affiliate link cloaking software at the location below – it’s 100% free! (The download contains a number of different items, the item to create the affiliate links is called “Affiliate Diamond”)

http://d9hosting.com/clients/dl.php?type=d&id=6

Feel free to leave any comments or questions.

Regards,
Dan

A Simple Way To Create Another Income Stream

A Simple Way To Create Another Income Stream

If you are anything like me you will always be on the look out for a new way to make a bit of extra cash. The hard thing is finding something that is easy to set up and then runs on auto-pilot…so let me present to you:

The Super Income Power Blaster 3000 Pro!

Just kidding…this method doesn’t really need an over-hyped title or even a sales page with shiny graphics. It won’t make you Heather Mills rich, but at least you won’t have to marry an ageing Beatle to make a living! (Apologies if you came to this post via my email notification – I just did the same joke twice)

The method that I am talking about today is the good old fashioned “ezine”

Now you may think that the ezine died out with the dinosaurs but I think you would be wrong. I personally still subscribe to a lot of free ezines for subjects that I find interesting, you won’t be surprised to hear that my interests are the usual dull subjects of web design and coding standards but each to their own!

These ezines are sent out on autopilot every few days. The owner of the ezine makes their money by displaying adverts that are relevant to the content of the ezine. Take one of my ezines for an example; one day I received an informative article on new SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standards, and half way through the article there was an ad for a free trial of some new SEO software. I downloaded the trial and then purchased the software, which then made the owner of the ezine a commission.

The great thing about these ezines (or at least the ezines I receive) is that the content isn’t actually written by the owner of the ezine. The owner simply sifts through the article directories looking for good, informative articles and then add’s the article to the email/ezine template.

So, what do you need to get started?

1. A subject!

2. You need to decide how you will deliver your ezine – via email or will you send them a web page that contains the article?

3. You’ll need an auto responder like Aweber to send out the automated emails

That’s it!

If you are able to find a good subject that a lot of people are looking for information on you could quickly generate a big base of readers/subscribers. The internet may have changed over the past few years but people still love free, top quality information and in my opinion, there is no better way to distribute this information than through an ezine.

I’d love to hear your own opinions on this, do you subscribe to any ezines? Or maybe you already run an ezine, if so do you have any tips for us ezine newbies?

Until next time,
Regards,
Dan

My Plans For 2008

My Plans For 2008

Well, we are now almost into February and 1/12th of the year is already gone..so why exactly am I doing my plan for 2008 now?

I honestly don’t know!

I was meant to do this a couple of weeks ago but time just seems to be flying by and I haven’t had a moment to mark out my plans. I’ve got a free morning before I go out for my mums 50th birthday so here we go, do let me know what you think of the plans, feel free to tell me if you think my ideas are crap 😉

1. Make more “x” websites

This is something I have been planning to do for the past 3 months, but as with a lot of things recently time is a massive problem. I currently have one “x” site that makes me around $1,000 each month. This site isn’t anything to do with Internet Marketing, and it doesn’t involve me selling anything, it also doesn’t involve a mailing list. This “x” site is totally separate from my other online ventures.

So if I were to make ten “x” websites, then I would be able to follow the steps I have taken with the first “x” site, and make a good amount each month, from each site….More on this later.

2. Improve the Boomerang List Builder

Again, this is something I have been looking into for some time, but 2008 will (fingers crossed!) see a “Pro” version of the software released. I’ve had a lot of feature request from existing customers, a lot would fit easily into the existing software, but the other, more complex suggestions would need a lot of extra work…but they would be REALLY cool features! So keep your eyes open for a “Pro” version sometime in 2008.

3. Improve D9 Hosting

D9 Hosting was one of my (and Paula my business partner) biggest successes of 2007. We initially started off very small scale, only expecting a small trickle of customers. The uptake of accounts from you guys has been amazing and has surpassed our wildest expectations, so it is our goal to continue to improve our service to you. We have some plans for 2008 and they will be revealed to D9 customers in due course!

4. Continue To Write Blog Posts/Newsletters!

This blog is coming up to it’s 2nd birthday, despite time being very hard to come by these days I always try and put aside at least an hour a week to write helpful posts, and reply to your comments and questions. I am now putting it in writing..so you can slate me if I don’t deliver, but I will strive to make at least one post on this blog at least every two weeks!

5. Create/Launch New “Websites x” Product

This is continuing on from point one. Take a look at these screen shots below, these show my earnings from ONE “website x” (this is the project codename!) website that I currently run. I’m not showing you these to show off or for a big pat on the back, I’m showing you what you can achieve from one website, that generates less than 30 hits each day!

First of all we have a brief summary of my earnings:

Then here’s a shot of my hotmail account that shows my notifications of new sales (commissions), you’ll see that on average I’m getting around two sales per day from the one “website x”:

Now my first aim, and it’s for purely selfish reasons, is to create more of these “website x” sites, so that I can make more money, and generate more screen shots for my product that will be coming sometime in 2008.

I’ve decided to create a brand new, video course, showing you exactly how I create these “website x” sites, and I’ll show you, step-by-step what you need to do to get them online and how to generate traffic too them. I am also planning to record myself making one of these sites from scratch and including that in the package.

So there we have it, my plans for 2008. Apologies if it sounded it a bit rushed, that’s because….well, it was! But I’ve finished by 11.30am so now I can get ready and go out for lunch.

Do let me know any comments or questions, I’ll be checking them out when I get back, and why not let us in on your plans for 2008, what are you going to be doing?

Regards,
Dan

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